Devil's Dream [Paperback]

"Devil's Dream" by Madison Smartt Bell is many things -- a book one can't put down; a fascinating story of American history and valiant warriors; and, finally, a book one wants never to end. This writer feels privileged to have discovered a perfect example of the novelist's craft. That is not to say it's an easy book -- it is, after all, a story of America's bloodiest war, and the protagonist, Nathan Bedford Forrest, is nothing if not a warior.

Forrest, a Confederate cavalry officer during the Civil War, his family, friends, and cavalry cohorts form the nucleus of this story of a man who may well be the most fearless and single-minded person who ever lived. Author Bell's character development in "Devil's Dream" is breathtaking for the scope and depth of his presentation. In the course of the book, we meet his wife, children, slaves, friends, and, yes, his mistress, each one of whom is well-developed and who further informs us about Forrest's persona. Best of all, we come to see Black and White people, slave and free, in many roles during what must have been the most tense time of race relations in American history. Of particular interest, too, are the attitudes of southerners on the ground, many of whom cohabit with family members who are Union sympathizers.

Author Bell's macrocosmic knowledge of American history and microcosmic details of Civil War battles is awesome. And, most important, none of this information is "told" to us lecture-like -- it's all "shown" -- and you feel yourself seated behind Forrest on his horse as he plunges into the thick of a half-dozen battles. One is astounded by the number of knife cuts and bullets the man survived as well as the number he administered to others. You'll lose count of the number of horses shot out from under him, but you'll never forget the two horses whose wounds he plugged with a finger in order to keep the nag galloping on in the battle to kill more Yankees.

Bell's deft use of language is at once descriptive but also breathtaking for its creativity -- a single word, a touch that arrests your attention, holds it captive, e.g., "Somewhere behind them the second cannon coughed," "and the pair of them were silhouetted in silver by the mist," "Day should have broken, but fog smothered the sun." And you'll find moments of surprising beauty in small details, e.g, following a battle where blood colored the Mississippi River and in the following morning when the fog lifts and there is the smell of death and gunpowder -- a white owl settles in a tree now leafless and "it preened its yellowish feathers and shrugged."

"Devil's Dream" by Madison Smartt Bell is more than a book to recommend, it's a MUST READ to add to your collection.

This is a terrific novel about a real figure: Nathan Bedford Forrest, who became one of the most respected Confederate generals in the Civil War. A slave-owner himself, he offers to free any slaves who will join him in fighting for the right to retain the institution. We see him in a rage, breaking a pot over the head of an insubordinate slave, then the next moment going to considerable expense to seek out and buy back the man's wife, who had been sold away from him. This only one of the contradictions that make Forrest so fascinating. Of minimal education himself, he nonetheless manages to win the heart of Mary Ann Montgomery, the genteel product of a finishing school, who tempers his roughness with grace, understanding, and a firm touch. Although still obviously in love with his wife, Bedford finds a different kind of passion with a slave woman, Catharine, with whom he will have several children. Two of his sons, one legitimate and the other not, will fight with him in the war, and the rivalry between them and their mixed pride and envy of their father forms one of the minor strands in this absorbing and exciting book.

I should say that I am no Civil War buff, and have read very few other books about the conflict. This one is good, not because it casts light on events that I already know, but because it leads me into a world I hardly knew at all. I can think of only other one novel that comes so close to making me feel the detail and texture of the war, Michael Shaara's magnificent THE KILLER ANGELS, his novelization of Gettysburg. But while Shaara takes the panoptic view, giving equal time to generals and soldiers on both sides, Bell filters everything through the eyes of Forrest and those closest to him. While Shaara focuses on a single set-piece battle, Bell deals as much with skirmishes, raids, and surprise attacks, a kind of fighting in woods and mountains that seems closer to guerilla tactics than the maneuvers of large armies. And while Shaara covers the action of only a few days, Bell ranges freely over a period of two decades, from 1845 to 1865.

Perhaps Bell's most significant decision was not to tell the book chronologically. His forty shortish chapters jump around between the prewar period, the war itself, and the immediate aftermath. Each centers around a specific anecdote, giving the book a series of immediate paybacks on the way to a powerful cumulative effect. I'm not sure I always understood the reason for the specific ordering of specific chapters, but the result is to give the book a psychological rather than historical unity. The connecting thread is the surprising mind of Nathan Bedford Forrest himself, with all his built-in contradictions. Bell also introduces -- indeed opens with -- a kind of chorus character, a free black from Haiti by way of New Orleans, whose name, Henri, is transformed into "Ornery" by the soldiers. Henri has the gift of second sight, able to foresee people's deaths, and in some of the more visionary scenes he is actually dead himself. Oddly enough, this fantastic aspect enhances the immediacy of the rest. It threads through the book like the "Devil's Dream" of the title, a fiddle tune that starts slow and works up faster and faster.

The Devil, of course, is Forrest, which was how Sherman described him to Lincoln; his Dream has evaporated by the war's end, although nothing dims the man's fighting spirit. There are plenty of episodes which can account for Forrest's reviled reputation, not least a massacre of black and white soldiers at Fort Pillow, but Bell presents his protagonist with sympathy and understanding. What he gives us is a flawed but honest individual of irresistible personal magnetism, a rough-tongued leader who is impossible for soldiers not to follow or readers not to admire: "Git round the left," he shouted at the remnants of the Seventh. "Take the damnjobberknowlyankees in the rear there. Git on with ye -- if ye're feart to be shot ye best go forward for I'm well and goddam ready to shoot ye in the back if ye don't."

Ambivalence nags at me
I both liked and grew a bit bored with Madison Smartt Bell's interesting Devil's Dream. Historical fiction about Civil War Confederate Cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, Mr. Bell used an interesting literary formula to examine the more intimate elements of General Forrest's roguish life and character. Nathan Forrest was both a simple man and extremely complex. He was a first class fighter, a man of principle, yet character flawed in several ways.
The book is not an easy one to read and requires the reader to pay attention. This is where my interest flagged as I found my mind wandering at times. In several places I skimmed filler to get back to more interesting writing. I did enjoy Mr. Bell's use of colloquial English and how he related General Forrest's views concerning slavery. All in all not an easy novel to read if you do not have some prior background concerning Nathan Bedford Forrest the man and famous civil war general. I am a long time civil war buff and General Forrest is one of my favorite civil war characters who I have read extensively about. Fairly accurate historically but do not expect to read much in the way of actual battles or personal combat. Some, but that is NOT the main thrust of this novel. Also, the non-sequential literary style of the writer can confuse the reader.
Not the best Civil War historical fiction I have read yet still interesting.
Hard to recommend as a hardback. If you are interested get it from your local library or wait for the paperback. Worth the read but be warned it will demand that the reader pay attention.

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